Sri Lanka

February 2000

Flying Sri Lankan Airlines from Mali to Colombo, was a different experience to Indian Airlines. We flew in a brand new A303 airbus on time. On each seat backing was a 6” TV screen where we had on-line camera shots of the cockpit view and also underneath the plane. This made for interesting viewing especially landing at night. The 30 minutes we had gained in the Maldives was lost along with another 30 minutes.

Columbo’s airport lies 30km north of the capital city near the scruffy beach resort of Negombo. In traditional fashion, we refused all taxi offers and had to walk 2 miles to the nearest bus station for a local bus. The airport was crawling with soldiers and checkpoints (since Colombo was a regular bombing target by the Tamil Tigers). They were friendly and laughed at us from their shelters, struggling along with our backpacks (mine weighs 20kg at present) in great puddles of sweat. We found a cheap hotel near the beach.

The next morning, there was a loud crash and a scream from the bathroom. Jo had been sitting on the toilet and it had collapsed, into small pieces, some of which grazed her backside. It was a bit embarrassing to go to reception and report "I'm terribly sorry, but my wife appears to have destroyed your toilet - nothing personal" – just the seat was hanging off with nothing underneath. They took it quite well as we beat a hasty exit.

We had 17 days in Sri Lanka and the trip can be split into three areas – the “Cultural Triangle” of ancient Buddhist ruins in the north, the splendid hill country, forests and tea plantations in the middle and superb beaches and coast in the south and south west.

On first impressions, Sri Lanka was a lot cleaner, tidier and quieter than India – but it was still loud. Rickshaws (“tuk-tuks”) zipped around competing with the trucks. They were some of the worst drivers we had seen – just lazy about road discipline. The houses were well tended with their own gardens. Not so many cows wandering around the streets. The Sri Lankan women were very attractive. The school children all wore smart white uniforms. It was the first country we had seen any courting couples.

The Sri Lankans were friendly (“Where you from Mister? Germany?” - ad nuseum), with hypnotic smiles but around tourist areas, every second person was trying to trick you out of money. Bus conductors would try and overcharge or forget to give you change, and when you asked some shop owners for the price of something, they just made up what they thought they could get away with. Therefore mineral water was anything from 32 – 60 rupees for the same bottle. We just walked away whenever the price was inflated. The local buses were jam packed – worst than India. There is a shortage of buses and they pack them on until you can’t breath. Someone actually sat on the driver’s leg in one bus! Consequently we had problems with our backpacks and it gave them more opportunities to extort money because they were taking up room. That said, it was still an exceptionally cheap country and the rip-offs were minimal. We only spent £150 each in over 2 weeks.

One of the reasons for overcharging is that, despite the bombings, Sri Lanka is full of wealthy tour groups – Germans, French, Italians who were bumping up the prices by paying anything asked. We were astounded to see two Germans get charged 100rp each for cans of Coke. A bottle at any store cost 12-15rp. The increasing tour groups have also meant the Government charging an excessive $15 per site entrance fee for the big three or you can buy a “Cultural Triangle” Ticket for $33 that gets you into all 3 plus another few that no one bothers with. You still have to pay other entrance fees ($4) to get into other sites. It was a bit of a shock after Indian prices of 5 or 10 rupees with not much dual pricing. In Sri Lanka, the tourist pays through the nose. The locals pay local rates.

We started our tour by heading north to the Buddhist ruins of Anuradhapura which, dating from the 5th Century BC, was the country's first capital and a major religious centre for nearly 1500 years. In its present form, it consists of a citadel surrounded by several large Buddhist monastic complexes and man made lakes. Since the sites were very spread out we spent an enjoyable day peddling around the countryside on rented bicycles. At one point, I saw a curled black object on a path. I thought it was a stick. Just as my bike was about to run it over, the 6ft snake suddenly scuttled off into the undergrowth. Boy, did I jump. (The following day, some workmen pointed out a large cobra nestling in the roof of a hut - if you don't like snakes - this is not your place!). At a museum we found ancient Buddhist toilet "squatting plates" - not something you see everyday.

The "Sacred Boa" tree was brought as a sapling from India when the Buddha's teaching was introduced to Sri Lanka. The tree is the oldest historically authenticated tree in the world, and it has been tended by an uninterrupted succession of guardians for over 2000 years. Such is the spiritual significance of it that it is now under heavy-armed guard by the army (in case of Tamil Tiger Bombings). We had 16 security checks in the area - body searches, bag searches. I got so fed up with them that at one point I dropped my shorts and pointed at my behind and said "After all these checks, this must be the only place left I could possibly be hiding something" which they thought was very amusing. ("crazy English tourist"). The Sacred Boa was a serene place, surrounded by pilgrims and Buddhist monks dressed in orange robes meditating.

It was strange to see Buddhist monks (both male and female with shaven heads) walking about this country. The buses have "reserved for clergy" seats at the front. If a monk gets on a bus and all seats are taken you have to give up your seat if he chooses you. On one packed bus, 3 monks got on and 3 people had to give up their seats. Buddhism is the major religion and every village/town had a white round 'stupa'. We visited Mihintale up the road from Anuradhapura, where Buddhism started in 247BC. 1840 granite steps led up to a majestic white stupa that could be seen for miles around poking above the forests.

The next day on the bus to Polonnaruwa, we had more than monk problems. Our bus was full of convicts going to jail. I thought that it was ironic that they were all seated and handcuffed to the seats while the rest of us honest-citizens had to stand for the whole 3 hours in the aisle. They dozed away while we considered breaking the law just to get a seat. It was a strange sight. We also had to wait until they were all unlocked and paraded off the bus by the prison guards before we were let off. I found it interesting that every jail we saw in Sri Lanka, was built by the sea next to a great beach. I couldn't work out if the views were there to cheer them up or get them more depressed because they had to watch me sitting on the beach drinking ice cold beer.

Polonnaruwa was the capital of Sri Lanka from the 11th to 13th Centuries. The museum was very impressive with many reconstructions of the former glories. The ancient remains consist of a walled inner and outer city, surrounded by monasteries and temples - but really mostly just foundations. We walked around the site which was covered in "trained" jungle vegetation. While I found the ruins (and endless tour buses) uninspiring, it was certainly a lovely place to spend the day walking. Just when we had given up on seeing anything spectacular we came across the 'Gil Vihara' - a group of 4 large Buddha images that were carved out of one long slab of granite. There was a 7m standing Buddha, but the most impressive was the great reclining image of the Buddha entering nirvana - which was over 14m long. It was so well carved that even the huge stone pillow had a subtle depression in it where the head lay.

In Dambulla, we teamed up with 6 other travellers (English, American, German and a Swiss couple going overland to Australia) and rented a minibus to take us to the final ancient site of Sigiriya. This is a spectacular 5th Century rock fortress which stands on top of a 200 metre outcrop looming above the lush tropical forests. It was a steep climb up vertical steps to view some stunning 5th Century wall paintings (pin-ups!) of women (pretty much intact) and the incredible views from the top where the palace ruins lay. In different ways, each of these three sites was unique and special.

Sitting at an altitude of 500m, Kandy is Sri Lanka's second biggest city with 100,000 people. The British took over Kandy in 1815, but it has always been the centre of the "Hill Country" where the altitude dispels the often sticky heat of the coastal regions or the dry air of the northern plains. The Hill Country is green and lush and much of the region is carpeted with the glowing colour of the tea plantations. The focus of Kandy is its magnificent artificial lake - a lovely centrepiece surrounded by green hills on all sides. The Peradeniya Botanical Gardens were wonderful and the best we had seen on this trip. The 60 hectare grounds contain giant bamboo, giant Kauri Pine and a gigantic Javan fig tree (planted 1860) on the Great Lawn covered 1600 sq. metres alone. It was the biggest tree canopy I had ever seen and looked like a huge green flying saucer had landed on the lawn. An Orchid house had dozens of varieties all in bloom. In the park there were signs saying "Offensive and indecent behaviour by couples is prohibited", but this didn't seem to stop hundreds of couples from courting in the undergrowth.

An hour west of Kandy lies the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage. This is worth a visit to Sri Lanka if you see nothing else. The Government run orphanage was set up to save abandoned, injured or orphaned wild elephants. You are able to see, feel and have your photo taken next to 62 elephants of different sizes and ages (2 ft high baby elephants up to an 80 year old blind Tusker elephant). When we arrived at 9am for feeding time, the place was mobbed with fat tour parties (spot the person without a video camera - us). Families of elephants (mummy elephant, daddy elephant and baby elephant in between) munched on palm tree leaves. Young elephants (about 6ft tall) were fed endless milk bottles by keepers (arrhh!). Then it was bath time! The herd were marched down a narrow alleyway lined with elephant souvenir shops to the river. Here they plunged in for a long dip. It was like a controlled elephant stampede. Suffice to say, it was brilliant to watch and we took far too many photos.

Adam's Peak, a day's bus rides from Kandy in the south west of the Hill Country is the pilgrimage workout Mecca. En route we saw miles of tidy green tea plantations clinging to every hillside with armies of colourfully dressed women picking tea in the fields with sack pinnies and a sack on their backs full of leaves held by a strap across their foreheads. They have to pick 20kg of tealeaves for less than £1 a day. While the tea bushes are at a good height to pick, it still looked like backbreaking work especially working on the steep hillsides.

Whether it is Adam's peak (the place where Adam first set foot on earth after getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden) or Sri Pada (where Buddha left a large footprint), it is a beautiful, majestic peak of 2224 metres. The trail up to the temple at the top has become a procession of pilgrims at regular intervals during the year. We happened to arrive the day before a bank holiday attempting to get in and out before the place was awash with devotees. Most tourists get up at 3am and struggle to the top for a spectacular sunrise - if they are lucky. We arrived in Dalhousie mid afternoon in very overcast skies and decided to climb it in the afternoon. The guidebooks said between 3-4 hours. Testing out my weight loss and fitness, I reached the top on 1 hour 40 mins. Vertical concrete steps covered an hour of the trail. It was like being on a terrible stepmaster machine. I passed dozens of groups of Sri Lankans who pottered up. Their plan of ascent seemed to be "at the threat of anyone suddenly finding a drop of sweat on their body, we will all stop, have a drink and continue on". Consequently, they took hours - 8 or 10. They laughed at me, as shirtless and in shorts and boots I plundered on upwards - dripping with sweat. "Where's the cards?" a women yelled, thinking that I had lost my clothes gambling. On the way up, I passed shrines, Buddhist monks giving blessings, beggars looking for handouts, 24 hour a day stalls offering food and drink.

At the top, with wispy clouds drifting past in strong winds, I found myself as the only Westerner watching about 200 pilgrims participating in a religious ceremony. The holy man chanted for what seemed hours in a very monotone way. Everyone had a reply to his every sentence. Jo joined me 45 mins later. She had walked up with a 55 year old Englishman who puffed his way up. I decided to jog down to the bottom and did it in 1 hour 15. From our guest house veranda, we watched thousands of people starting the trail at any hour day or night.

At 4am the next morning, I did it all again. 6 people had left the guest house between 2.30 and 3.30am. I got up at 4am, saw a full moon and thought, maybe there will be a sunrise. I ascended again rapidly, able to pace myself because I knew the route. The entire trail was lit by electric lights, but it was still dark underfoot. I was amazed to pass Sri Lankans coming down whom I had seen going up the night before. They must have been walking all night. I passed all the others on the way up and arrived in 1 hour 35, to find about 100 westerners and 2000 pilgrims huddled away from the winds waiting for sunrise. We waited an hour. It wasn't very spectacular - too cloudy, and I came down again for breakfast. By now, my calf muscles were sore and they took days to recover.

To get to the western side of the Hill Country, we took our first train ride. The British built the railway system and it seems to have hardly changed. The small tidy wooden stations have wind up phones, the engines are diesel, pulling wooden carriages (2nd/3rd class only). When a train pulls in, the train driver throws out what looks like a rigid noose with a pouch. This contains a real gold "tablet" with the name of the station the train came from. When the train leaves for the next station, the driver gets the next "tablet". Only one train can have the tablet for a section of track at a time and on a single line network, this ensures that there are no crashes between trains. It has worked for the last 100 years and they see no reason to change it. The trains are embarrassingly cheap but are usually late. "When does it arrive?" "When it gets here".

The train journeys around the hill country are magnificent. You chug along escarpments overlooking valleys shrouded in cloud, rising moisture and lush tropical vegetation and tea plantations. We based ourselves at the small town of Haputale. Big mistake. It always seemed to rain there. Just after we arrived in the late afternoon, we were walking around the town when 3" of rain fell in one hour! Monsoon type weather that swamped the place in water. We got soaked just trying to stay dry and waded back to the hotel. It happened again the next afternoon at the same time. Travellers at the hotel who were staying a few days had all bought umbrellas and complained that even though they had come as far south as the Equator on holiday, it was wetter than England.

We visited Horton Plains National Park - the cheap and dirty way! Instead of renting a taxi there and back, we caught a local train for the 40-minute ride (3 rupees). Then to avoid an 11km climb by road, we hiked up through a jungle "short cut", for an hour. Due to the recent rain, it was muddy, slippery and waterlogged. The wet vegetation soaked us. My boots filled with water. Suddenly we reached the plains. The Horton Plains form an undulating plateau more than 2000m high. They consist mainly of grasslands interspersed with patches of forest. They are beautiful and silent. Leopards live here, but we only saw their droppings with fur sticking out of them. We also heard the wheezy grunts of the shaggy bear monkey.

The most famous and stunning feature is World's End, where the southern Horton Plains come suddenly to an abrupt end and drop almost straight down for 700m, but after 10am it is completely covered in mist. It was 11.30am. There was another problem. They wanted $12 each to enter World's End. No thank you. So we walked a couple of miles up the road to the "Poor Man's World's End" which cost nothing and we had the same view - mist, with occasional glimpses of the cliffs and bottom. Then we walked 11km back to the train station. They don't call us cheap for nothing. Cost of day - 6 rupees each.

Tea plantations surround Haputale and the first one was built by Thomas Lipton in 1890. On a Sunday morning we caught a workers bus to the plantation 10-km away for a tour. The single-track road hugged the sides of a steep sided valley, which were covered in tea bushes everywhere. Not many people bother to visit, so we had our own private tour for an hour where we were taken by a foremen around the factory and explained every procedure. The pickers bring in their leaves at the end of the afternoon and the factory starts up. Over a series of days, the leaves go through a process of drying, rolling, chopping, and sieving before being graded. No conveyor belts are used. The tea is moved by hand because the processes can take different amount of time. We watched the both sexes working (for the same wage as pickers), and men building the tea chests that are so familiar to us. Everyone lives by the factory in a purpose built village. They get free accommodation, education, childcare facilities and medical insurance. It was very educational.

By now, I was bored stiff with rice and noodles. I succumbed to "Spagetti Bolognese" at the hotel. We found the Sri Lankan food rather bland. All the cheap market snacks were too spicy with turmeric that burnt even my mouth (and I like it hot). There was usually only chicken and rice/noodles on any menu. When you stay at a guesthouse , they cook you evening meals and breakfast. While tasty, it just didn't match Indian dishes. They had these strange dishes called "Hoppers" - a kind of pancake filled with something - either meat or curd/honey. However in Kandy I found my first fresh milk in 3 months.

While we really enjoyed the Hill Country (what I would call the "real" Sri Lanka), the constant damp and rain drove us south to the famous coastline of Sri Lanka for our final week. At Tangulla, the wife of the guesthouse was a teacher and she held private English classes in a makeshift open-air classroom in the back garden. She asked me to come and talk to the dozen children aged 12 and 13 in their smart white uniforms. I have no idea how they keep them clean. The children were very polite, spoke excellent English and asked about our trip, and Princess Di. I asked them what they wanted to do when they left school (lawyer, doctor, maths teacher, engineer) and told them all to expect computers to flood Sri Lanka before they left school. Some of them were already using them. In Tangulla we also met a Sri Lankan man who took the photos for half the postcard pictures on sale. We had bought many of them ourselves and he showed us some of his prize shots.

To escape the rain which continued, we fled further west to Hikkaduwa , one of the well established resort towns, and spent 5 nights at a nice hotel near the beach. Off shore, there was a "coral garden" where the glass bottom boat crews offered to take tourists. When I swam out there, I discovered that most of the coral was dead and only spotted 6 fish types. As the boats passed me, I swallowed diesel and knew how they had destroyed their tourist attraction. I spent my 40th birthday, calling my parents, snorkelling, sunbathing and drinking some excellent Sri Lankan beer. You could buy two ice cold pint bottles of 8% stout (like Guinness) for £1. But it was so strong, a second was too much. Must be losing my touch.

We rented a Honda 125 motorbike (£3 a day) and I took Jo for a 150km spin back around the southern coast so that we could take pictures and I could go swimming and body surfing at all the spectacular beaches (Unawatura and Marisse recommended). We saw some of the 'stilt fishermen'. These are fishermen who sit on tall poles above the sea near the coast, fishing. When the wind and tide is right, they maintain that it is the best method of catching fish which has been practised for centuries.

We called in on Galle, the 4th biggest city, based around a 16th Century Dutch fort - now a World Heritage Site, with the walls and many colonial buildings still intact. The New Imperial Hotel was the former Dutch Governor's House and has been a hotel since the 1800s. With its original hardwood floors, colonial furniture and large white spacious shaded rooms with fans revolving around the ceiling and staff dressed in while/orange uniforms revolving around guests, it was the best building I visited in Sri Lanka. But Galle also had more beggars and children asking for presents than anywhere else.

While walking around the walls, we saw two soldiers trying to shoot at a shark that had become trapped in a coral lagoon at low tide. It took them so long and they fired so many shots that a crowd grew to watch the hunt. Finally after oh 20-30 shots of automatic fire, the 6ft shark was disabled and unable to flee. It took 4 of them to haul it out of the water. Sickening to watch really.

Before we returned the bike, we visited a Mask Carving shop/museum at Ambalangoda. The masks are carved from balsa wood and then painted. They are used for dancing and decorative purposes. But some are used in Devil Dancing ceremonies to cure illnesses. There are masks of the demons to cure infectious diseases, diseases caused by wind (?), caused by bile, caused by fits of vomiting, fainting and swooning, fever, phlegm, lunacy, death, expurgation of the morbid state, lameness, madness, blindness, cholera, deafness, dumbness, fits, boils. That seemed to cover most possibilities, but I suggested to the owner that he create new demon masks to counteract Diseases caused by "Microsoft upgrades", "Insurance salesmen patter" and "all computer jargon". He said he would see what he could do.

It was Jo's first proper ride on a motorbike and she loved it. Even if we did have to compete with the bullying bus drivers who tried to force you off the road. She got quite adept at using sign language to display her displeasure. Our faces were black when we returned the bike. Such was her enjoyment of having the sun, wind, and oil in her hair that we are contemplating doing part of our third visit to India on a motorbike.

The final days in Sri Lanka were lazy - catching buses and trains up the coast to visit more deserted beaches with crashing waves (Bentota was the best). We saw lots of sea turtle marks in the sand where they had dragged themselves up the beach to lay their eggs, but it only happened at night. We caught a train to Colombo to buy some more books. The 100km-train ride which follows the beaches, must be one of the most picturesque I have ever taken. The waves crashed against the shore which was lined with palm trees. At some points the water was only 50ft from the train line and it was like travelling over water.

Columbo, the capital was full of soldiers and security guards. Every street in the centre had an army checkpoint, and we were searched in every place we entered and had to deposit our daypacks. They had had recent bombings and had made it nigh on impossible to move without the right papers. We had passed army checkpoints all over the island. Sometimes, they made everyone get out of the bus and file past an inspection desk and then get back on the bus. But we were often ignored. Colombo was a large non descript city by the coast with nothing of interest except for business (confirming flights, Internet etc).

Last year, Sri Lankan tourist levels reached the old 1983 high of 436,000 and at the rate of current increases, they estimate over a million tourists a year by 2005. It is easy to see why. It’s a safe (bombs permitting), friendly island with many attractions, great weather and exceptionally cheap. I'd recommend it as a decent holiday location. Once you have paid for your flight here, everything costs peanuts and there is plenty to do. But get here soon. I fear the tour group industry will destroy the island's ambience and everyone will jump aboard the dollar bandwagon.

Travel - £15.71
Accommodation - £30.43
Food - £50.26
Other - £55.94 (inc 19.70 for Cultural Triangle Ticket)
Total - £152.34

Grand Total - £1466.50